| Shadow1980 said: That actually would be a great idea as well. VGC has always had a significant margin of error that always needed to get adjusted once the "official" trackers published their figures, though it's still better than nothing and post-adjustment numbers seem to be more like a Famitsu vs. MC thing. I can understand why some people have been critical of the site's week-to-week tracking. If VGC would step up its game and tried to become an "official" tracker with the same tools and methodology and access to more accurate data, that would be amazing. Despite the initial margins of error, I've always appreciated that VGC at least tries to have publicly-available sales data. They're really the only place that does that, and I've always hated how NPD has gotten so damn secretive about everything until NPD_Muclair started posting at GAF. I mean, it's just sales data, not some super-duper trade secret. |
I know, right? And NPD used to even give GAF numbers from like 2006-2008. That was the hook I was able to use. "Hey NPD George / NDP_Mulcair, you guys gave GAF numbers before, just do what you used to do back in the day." And eventually it worked, but only thanks to the new guys. A year ago when they were harassing me it would have been impossible.
I've made posts on GAF about the issues of VGC accuracy before and that still rings true today. Sometimes VGC is pretty accurate...other times it's far off the mark. I personally can't trust it because I can see the discrepancies are significant at times but hey, gotta give them credit for at least trying.
But that's really easy to solve. If VG Chartz could establish a relationship with Walmart, Target, GameStop, Best Buy, and Amazon, they would effectively become as relevant as NPD. They would have 90% of the sales in the market. Now of course, 90% accuracy isn't as accurate as NPD, mind you, but it's still pretty damn close (NPD is 95% accurate). Close enough that lots of institutions would start paying for them. Hell, we'd buy a subscription to them.
